Transgendered Sheet Music
Bring On The Gentlemen!
By Ms Bob and Carol Kleinmaier
Last of Three Parts
Part 1 | Part 2
Even the most casual and poorly researched drag histories are fond of recounting how boys or men played the parts of women in the age of Shakespeare. Certainly the dress of the period aided the “sweet faced youth” in appearing as a convincing girl. The gowns were huge and the shape of the body underneath was well hidden, especially if the dress included a farthingale, a set of hoops which made the hips so wide that women had to walk sideways through anything narrower than a double door.
This cross casting may have given rise to the dramatic convention of leading “ladies” disguising themselves as young men, an easy task if the “actress” was a young man anyway. Viola, from “Twelfth Night,” spends most of the play disguised as the page Cesario. In “The Merchant of Venice” Portia and Nerissa, her maid, save the day when they, in Nerissa’s words, “turn to men.” Portia delivers the famous “Quality of mercy” speech in lawyer drag. Some even say that the term “drag” comes from Shakespeare’s stage instructions. Next to his gender chameleons’ entrances the bard would write “drag” (dressed as a girl) or “drab” (dressed as a boy) as the scene required.
Women were allowed on stage during the Restoration and by 1700 female impersonation went very out of fashion and became limited to only the most comic, and often bawdy women. Since so many women’s roles presented little challenge (How many ways can you say “Yes, Father” or “I love you , John?”), by the end of the century women were playing many of the Bard’s most demanding male roles. Sarah Siddons may have been the first with her 1775 Richard III. But the list goes on and on with women portraying Henry IV, Falstaff, Shylock, Othello, Iago, Hamlet and even the star-crossed Romeo.
When women first performed Viola or Portia the mostly male audience wasn’t interested in a convincing male impersonation. Restoration men’s clothing was almost as revealing as women’s was concealing, especially from the waist down where tights left nothing to the imagination about the shape of hips, buttocks. legs and thighs. This display became the prime attraction of actresses in men’s clothes, as this testimonial by the eminent diarist Samuel Peyps shows: "To the Theatre where a woman came afterwards on the stage in men’s clothes, and had the best legs that ever I saw, and I was very well pleased by it.” Somehow it’s not surprising that the return of actresses to the stage would untimately result in their display for men.
Or so the men must have thought. But, it seems that some of the fair sex were smitten by these gender pretenders, too. English actress Annie Hindle was billed by her American manager as the “first out-and-out male impersonator New York’s stage had ever seen.” This wasn’t exactly true, but it sounded good. The very popular Annie once compared “mash notes” from her adoring fans with matinee idol Henry J. Montague. She had more billets-doux than he did and all of her notes were from women!
Annie must have had a very convincing bearing. She even carried her impersonation beyond the footlights. She and Annie Ryan, her dresser, fooled a minister in Grand Rapids Michigan; he married them in Room 19 of the Barnard House in June 1886. Annie, the groom, wore a dress suit for the occasion and the bride a women’s traveling ensemble. In spite of the scandal which followed the minister insisted, “I believe they loved each other and that they will be happy!” At this point a false story started circulating, claiming that Annie was actually a man who had been passing as woman for the past twenty years.
By the beginning of the twentieth century male impersonation was a stage staple. There was an entire set of character types for women to portray: the young man about town, the sailor, the soldier, an occasional drunk, the Principal Boy in English pantomimes (where a man always played the Dame) and many other boys besides: Little Lord Fauntleroy, Dick Whittington, the boys in “The Prince and the Pauper” and, of course, Peter Pan.
YOU OUGHT TO SEE HER NOW
by Harry Pease, Ed. G. Nelson and Rob Russak, published by Jack Mills, Inc., 1920
Though the cover of this sheet says the song was “Introduced by Billy Glason,” neither of the photos show Billy. The guy with the cigarette is male impersonator Florence Tempest. This is confirmed by another copy of the sheet in the possession of New York collector Joe E. Jefferys which bears the same image, but proclaims “As Introduced by Florence Tempest” in the box under the title. It wasn’t uncommon for sheet music publishers to issue sheets under a variety of artists’ names, depending on who was popular that season.
Florence Tempest originally worked as a duet with her sister. The act was called Tempest and Sunshine. That’s Sunshine in the cloud of smoke upper left. By the time this song was issued Sunshine had retired from show bisiness and Florence was working as a single. Tempest and Sunshine weren’t the only sister act to feature crossdressing. Vaudeville historian Joe Laurie, Jr. remembers that, “Mollie & Nellie King (Mollie did the boy), Adele Ferguson and Edna Northlane, and the Armstrong Sisters were some of the others, and in the Moore & Young act they both changed to male clothes for a finale.” He also recalls that “Tempest did a swell boy.”
An interesting parallel to these sister acts might be a sister duo from the ballet. For much of the 19th century male dancers were almost totally absent from the ballet stage. Women took the roles of the beardless heroes and the chorus parts of sailors, hussars and toreadors. Not only did this rid the stage of effeminacy in a macho and military era but, as Lynn Garafola notes, “the Opéra’s corps de ballet donned breeches and skin-tight trousers that displayed to advantage the shapely legs, slim corseted waists, and rounded hips, thighs, and buttocks of the era’s ideal figure the danseuse en travesti brazenly advertised her sexuality. She was the hussy of the boulevards on theatrical parade.” This is one of the reasons that Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, founded in 1909, was such an important company. It returned the male danseuse to a position of prominence.
Like so many female impersonators many male impersonators tried to distance themselves from the stigma of homosexuality. One of the most famous ballet duos of the late 19th century were sisters Fanny and Thérèse Elssler. Fanny was the “romantic temptress” and Thérèse, who choreographed their dances as well as taking care of the business side of their careers, was the "faithful cavalier." Garafola implies that any sapphic interest between these two dancers was mitigated under the cloak of “sisterly devotion.” Surely these women were not so brazen as to flaunt society’s taboos against both homosexuality and incest.
Florence Tempest’s characters were usually men about town, rakish, worldly rogues. Both Tempest & Sunshine must have had wonderful voices, judging by the large amount of sheet music which features them including Banjo Tunes, Bless Your Ever Loving Little Heart, Oh! That Moonlight Glide and Oh You Tease. Florence’s repertoire is marked by a number of songs for wooing the ladies like I Live Up-Town, Oh! What a Beautiful Dream (You Seem), Chase Me (I’m Single) and I Love the Ladies from the show “Our American Boy.” She even has one number about a World War I doughboy, He’ Doing His Bit (for the Girls), composed by Harry Von Tilzer, an important Tin Pan Alley composer who published some 2,000 songs including (She’s Only) A Bird in a Gilded Cage (1900) and I Want a Girl - Just Like the Girl That Married Dear Old Dad (1911).
I'VE GOT THE TIME - I'VE GOT THE PLACE - BUT IT'S HARD TO FIND THE GIRL
Lyrics by Ballard MacDonald, Music by S. R. Henry, published by Joseph W. Stern & Co.
English woman Hetty King was billed as “King of Male Impersonators.” Though most books place her in the shadow of her contemporary Vesta Tilley, “Variety,” December 18, 1909, wrote that “Hetty King will linger in the memory as the acme of the art of male impersonation.” She was born in 1883 and first appeared on the London stage at age 14 in 1897. A real trooper, she was rarely off stage after that. She played Aladdin at the Royal Court Theatre in Liverpool in 1904 and had her American debut at the New York Theatre in October, 1907. She never retired and continued her male impersonations almost until her death at the age of 89, September 28, 1972. Her act was always fit for the entire family with no hint of double entendre. Off stage she was a happily married woman.
At the turn of the century she was a star attraction of the British music halls. She was most famous for her sailor impersonations singing songs like I’m Going Away or All the Nice Girls Love a Sailor. She did soldiers, too, but the pride of her act was her “dude” roles and their wardrobe. Reviews would often go into fabulous length about her suits, spats and hats. In this, the age of the English dandy, the press said that her wardrobe would make the heart “of the most Chesterfieldian beau palpitate with pleasure.”
SHOWING AUNT MATILDA ‘ROUND THE TOWN
by E. W. Rogers, published by T. B. Harms & Co., 1897
Vesta Tilley represents the pinnacle of male impersonation. She was born in 1864 almost literally “in a trunk” and started her male impersonations early. The story goes that one night she snuck into her father’s dressing room, put on his coat and hat and tried to sing like a man. She did her first male impersonation in a boy’s suit in 1869. During the 1880’s she was called “The dandiest fellah turned sixteen.” In 1912 she became the first male impersonator to give a Royal Performance, though legend has it that Queen May was so shocked by a woman in men’s clothing that she couldn’t bear to watch Tilley perform and turned her head away from the stage. She sent the British off to World War I with the song Jolly Good Luck to the Girl Who Loves a Soldier. During Vesta Tilley’s over fifty years on the stage she made several films and several American vaudeville tours. She turned down one in 1912 because she didn’t wish to work on Sundays, even for $4,000 a week.
It is usually said that her voice was not strong, but that her carriage carried the act. One critic wrote that “If Vesta Tilley could not sing a note nor speak a word, she could walk her songs successfully. There has never been a player who could paint a character more clearly by work or note than she can by her walk.” But, even if her voice wasn’t the best, she made famous one of Tin Pan Alley’s first big hits, a song which sold over 5,000,000 copies, After the Ball. This song was composed and self-published by Charles K. Harris, who once rented a room in Milwaukee and hung out a sign, “Banjoist and Song Writer, Songs Written to Order.”
Like female impersonator Julian Eltinge, her private life was spotless. She married a music hall manager in 1890, Walter de Frece. In 1919 he was knighted and Vesta Tilley became Lady de Frece. She retired from the stage the next year. At her farewell performance, London Coliseum, June 5, 1920, the standing room only crowd gave her seventeen curtain calls. Her adoring fans presented her with a testimonial bearing over a million signatures.
The song presented here is characteristic of Tilley’s “dude” roles, when she was billed as “The London Idol” and played the young man about town. The song’s range is within an octave, making it well suited for a performer who can “put a song over” better than she can sing. Its story concerns a London dude who is visited by his Aunt Matilda from the rural town of Lincolnshire. He takes advantage of the old girl in a harmless sort of way. Though she’s a teetotaler he takes her to a bar and tells her the drink is “sort of ginger beer.” When “in her poor old cranium” she “began to feel so queer” he tells her, “It’s the air, Aunt, it’s so strong up here.” He tells her “ev’ry lady was a Countess, that we met” and that the street walkers on the Strand are all “Daughters of Clergymen.” On a visit to the Empire Ballet she disapproves of the chorus girls
and said, ‘How rude!’
Till I told her they were fairies just come from the wood!
I said, ‘They’re angels, without wings!’
She said, “I’ve read about such things!’
As the Aunt departs she gives her guide a gift saying,
“Bert, here’s fifty pounds, because you’ve been so good.
In the missionary box I know you’ll put the lot.”
As I thank’d her, to myself I whisper’d, “Yes, p’rhaps not!”
To all the boys I’ve shown the “bright,”
And I am on a spree, tonight!
Chorus:
I’ve been showing my Aunt Matilda ‘round the town,
Taking her down the street, you know,
Pointing her out the beauty show!
Come with me on a spree,
Sorrow and care we’ll drown,
For aunt has given me fifty pounds
For showing her ‘round the town.
is an avid collector of TG material
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